Route Update

Updates From the Road - Christchurch, New Zealand - 11/1-11/7

November 7th, Christchurch, New Zealand - Our last week in New Zealand has come and gone with more amazing vistas, exciting adventures and memorable experiences; as well as the side show of a depressing election result (a topic of discussion with almost anyone who learns we are American). We started the week with a side trip to Mt. Aspiring national park; driving towards the trail head intending to spend a few hours walking in the West Matukituki valley towards the glacier. Some unknown distance from the trailhead we encountered a stream that we would have to ford with a sign recommending 4x4 vehicles only; while fairly certain we could make it, in a rental car untold miles from the nearest tow truck we decided not to take the chance and got out to walk. Luckily, it was only 15 minutes before a Canadian couple came driving by and stopped to give us a lift up the road. A few minutes later we came to another ford; realizing we would have to walk back as far as we had driven, and seeing a swing bridge across the river leading to trails on the other side, we thanked them and headed across the bridge. One of the great things about walking in an open valley between a river and a mountain, with few trees but hundreds of grazing cows is that you do not really need a trail since you cannot possibly get lost. We saw a waterfall across the valley and headed in its direction; it made for a nice little walk and was a beautiful spot for a stop. The return journey took a little while before a local who likes to spend weekends camping in the park came down the road and drove us the last few kilometers to our car.

Continuing south towards our destination at Te Anau, we intended to stop at a vineyard in the Queenstown area for some refreshing free wine. Before reaching the intended vineyard we saw a sign for one that also had a cheesery, and we are not the types to pass up a chance at free cheese. This served as omen of things to come; we stumbled across a couple of other great cheeseries across the rest of the week and were suitably impressed by all the varieties of brie, blue, farmhouse and feta we tried. The lake towns and fjords of the south coast were all amazing, and a cruise on Milford sound was a great outing. But one of the best experiences in this region was seeing a rare Takahe (a bird) held in Te Anau; this species was thought to be extinct until some were spotted in the area in 1948. They have now moved populations to predator free islands to revive their numbers (I will come back to conservation in a moment). About an hour south of Te Anau near the town of Clifden is a series of limestone caves that are open for exploration; we crawled and spelunked our way through the caves until we came to the 'swimming pool' which was too deep to be crossed dry with no visible way around. I highly recommend a stop here if in the neighborhood, it is quite fun and different from the other tourist sites around the country; and if anyone figures a way around the pool let me know. Stopping in Invercargill to visit 124 year old Henry, the tuatara (a lizard-like relic of the dinosaur era), we walked passed our first Kiwi Prius; the steering wheel was on the wrong side and it didn't have all the features, but it made us miss our car anyway (To parents: how's it doing?).

Driving down the Clinton-Gore highway, listening to election updates on the radio, I had a yearning for the simpler times when we had a philandering president with decent policies, rather than a corrupt president who somehow believes that his generally poor policies are the will of God. I guess I'm going to take this opportunity to go on a little tirade over the election results (so for the faint of heart, dogmatic republicans or those who have given up you can skip to the next paragraph); but I'm going to use a loose connection to our experiences to justify the rant. We visited a private farm called Penguin Place to see the Yellow Eyed penguins; billed as the rarest in the world this species is in danger of extinction due to the combination of unusual social behavior, habitat destruction and human introduced predators. Unlike other penguins, these are very anti-social and will not even nest within sight of another nest. As a result, when combined with the destruction of its coastal forest habitat, the number of nesting sites has decreased considerably pushing the species to the brink of extinction. About 15 years ago the owner of the farm along with a local tour operator decided that it was financially and emotionally worth their while to regenerate the penguin's habitat while preserving their current population. Since that time, they have created a successful and well regarded tour operation that uses a series of trenches and hides to get you very close to the birds. This provides the resources and reason for carefully monitoring the penguin's nest sites and reproductive success while recreating their coastal habitat. To that end, they have planted around 7,000 new trees of the various indigenous varieties preferred by the penguins. What I find interesting is that most of those trees will not be mature for over 100 years; well past the lifetime of the farmers, the farmer's children and likely the farm itself. The idea of taking action today that will reap benefits for future generations is a consistent theme across ethical systems which is typically ignored in practice. Now that we are looking at four more years of this administration (has anyone checked the results in Florida for fraud in electronic voting machines yet?), this is one notion I hope our currently shortsighted leaders adopt. Alas, I suspect they will continue with their current wrongheaded policies (claiming to have some broad mandate despite winning Ohio by a smaller population than the home crowd of a Buckeye game); an economic policy that is shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to the poor while reducing the services the poor, young and elderly rely upon for food, education, healthcare, etc. (how any religious Christian, Jew or other can think that allowing homosexuals to visit their partners in the hospital does not pale in comparison to the affect this administration's economic and social polices have had on the most vulnerable among us is beyond me; it may be they spend too much time at the craps table to notice), a social policy that is designed to erase all the progress made towards individual rights in favor of a virtually theocratic state based on the most distorted notion of what constitutes Christianity (Has anyone listened to Ashcroft go on on his mission from God? It's no wonder he lost an election toa dead guy.), a foreign policy that systematically alienates us from all our allies while leaving the country completely unprepared to deal with the development of a true threat to our global supremacy in China (the 2008 Olympics are going to be a huge coming out party), a terrorism policy that does not address the roots of terrorism at all while leaving destruction in its wake (we have left Afghanistan to be run by a couple dozen warlords once again producing poppy for the world and the poor people of Iraq are being used as an experiment by this administration while not seeing improvement in their lives from the Hussein dictatorship; when you cannot even improve upon a dictatorship in the eyes of the populace how can you even begin to talk about success), an energy policy that pushes 'fixes' which are neither necessary nor sufficient in addressing either our short term problem of relying on volatile regions or our long term problem of sustaining an inhabitable planet while maintaining our standard of living; while downplaying the fixes that are both necessary and potentially sufficient (drilling in ANWR is like putting a band aid on a stroke victim, it doesn't even address the symptoms of the problems; whereas developing alternative energies and energy-efficient technology is the only cure out there for the actual disease), and finally an environmental policy that, against all the lessons one can learn from the farmers of the Otago peninsula, systemically aims to reduce the possibility of sustaining our ecosystem into the future. All right, I'm done ranting; and hopefully I'm done with American politics for a while, its way too depressing. That said, if anyone wants to comment on any of this feel free to respond to this email or send a comment via the update signup page on the website.

One of the most intrepid groups of travelers out there are the Japanese; they take their bus tours everywhere. In Oamaru I finally realized how they cover so much ground. Every night in this town, some time after sunset, dozens of blue penguins (the smallest species of penguin) come ashore together and waddle back to their nests after a long day feeding at sea. The town has set up a viewing area for this event that holds up to 300 people; they give an approximate time of when to show up, but as with any wild animal they could not possibly predict the exact moment they will come. The night we were there, sharing the viewing area with a Japanese bus group, the penguins came considerably later that expected. After about a half hour of waiting, just as the first penguins were coming ashore, the tour leader motioned to all the stunned tourists that it was time to go; as if they were in a hurry to get somewhere at 9pm. The entire group left, clearly disappointed; and for good reason, they missed quite a show. About 70 penguins came ashore that night, a few walked within a couple feet of the grandstand and one let me get right up next to it as it took an evening stroll in the parking lot. Why bother to go somewhere if you won't wait the extra few minutes to actually see what you came for?

Mt. Cook was our next stop; it is the highest mountain in Australasia and another spectacular site. Staying in a cabin at the campground, using the toilet and shower blocks, I was reminded of all the various campgrounds my family stayed at on our summer vacations. I want to take this moment to thank my parents for teaching me at a young age that you can have a good time cheaply without luxury. I suspect at some point they will want to apologize to Karen for the same lesson. The area here is also stunning and we walked to some great views of the surrounding peaks, glaciers and glacial lakes. We followed that up with a half day of rock climbing up the sheer cliffs around the Cook range; it was a nice challenge for our final New Zealand adventure.

We are now spending a relaxed day back in Christchurch; running some errands, making some advanced reservations, taking care of email etc. New Zealand has been a fantastic experience, and worth some more of our time in the future (I have a feeling we'll be saying that quite a bit). From the alpine peaks to the west coast rainforest to the sheep-filled farmland of the east to the rugged coastlines; the countryside has been beautiful and the people extremely friendly. Tomorrow morning we head off to Tasmania for kangaroos, devils and more great wilderness.



© 2004 by Avi Alpert